|
 In the News:
Granof Suggests Cure for
High Textbook Prices
The New York Times, Aug. 12, 2007
Accounting Professor Michael Granof
proposed a solution to the high cost of college
textbooks in an op-ed published in the New York Times. Excerpt:
“By now, entering college students and their parents have been
warned: textbooks are outrageously expensive. Few textbooks for
semester-long courses retail for less than $120, and those for
science and math courses typically approach $180. Perhaps these
students can take comfort in knowing that the federal government
empathizes with them, and in an attempt to ease their pain
Congress asked its Advisory Committee on Student Financial
Assistance to suggest a cure for the problem. Unfortunately
though, the committee has proposed a remedy that would only
worsen the problem.”
Read op-ed.
Read follow up story in Austin American-Statesman.
 Texas
MBA Team Defeats Columbia, Faces Yale for $200,000 in Finals of CNBC Show
In the second round of
CNBC's
“Fast Money MBA
Challenge” Team Texas beat Columbia August 15.
The team will go on to face Yale in the championship, which airs live
from Nasdaq 8:00 p.m. CDT, August 22 in New York City.
Ben Jones, Tim
Killgoar, Justin Sander and
Chris Semain are
representing McCombs in this finance-themed game show. The
winning team will take home $200,000 for educational expenses.
In the first round, Texas defeated top-seeded MIT. Remember to
tune in August 22 to cheer on Texas!
Watch the first-round show versus MIT.
Watch the second-round show versus Columbia.
 Mills
Research Honored by American Taxation Association
Lillian Mills, associate professor of
accounting, was awarded the 2007 manuscript award from the
American Taxation Association for co-authoring the paper, “Last
Chance Earnings Management: Using the Tax Expense to Meet
Analysts’ Forecasts,” which appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of
Contemporary Accounting Research. The American Taxation
Association presents this award for significant contribution to
the tax literature during the three calendar years prior to the
announcement year.
 U.S.
News Ranks McCombs Undergrad Program #7
U.S. News & World Report released survey results for its 2008
edition of America’s Best Colleges. Under the Best Business
Programs category, the McCombs undergraduate program was ranked
#7. Individual specialties at McCombs were ranked as follows:
Accounting: #1; Entrepreneurship: #7; Finance: #6;
Insurance/Risk Management: #9; International Business: #7 (tie);
Management: #5; Management Information Systems: #3; Marketing:
#2 (tie); Production/Operations Management: #9; Quantitative
Analysis/Methods: #7; Real Estate: #11(tie); Supply Chain
Management/Logistics: #12.
Get the full list of U.S. News rankings.
In the News:
Prentice Analyzes Sarbanes-Oxley Act Five Years
Since Passage
CIO Insight, July 30, 2007
 IROM Professor Robert Prentice examined the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act five years after its enactment in a
column for CIO Insight. Excerpt: “SOX 404 undoubtedly imposes
significant costs on firms that must install the required
internal controls and pay auditors to inspect them. But by
improving the flow and accuracy of information provided to
investors, SOX 404 and other mandatory disclosure provisions
reduce risk. When investor risk is mitigated, disclosing firms
can raise more capital faster and at less cost than they can in
the absence of such disclosure. Other, smaller firms,
particularly those with poor internal controls or tenuous
financial status, pay a high price. But overall capital market
efficiency is improved.”
Get the full story.
Undergraduate Honor Roll Recognizes Six Faculty Members in 2007
 Six
faculty members were chosen for the 2007 Faculty Honor Roll. The
winners were selected based on results from an undergraduate
student survey, which takes place each semester. Congratulations
to the following: Kathleen Edwards (left),
management lecturer; Frenkel Ter Hofstede,
marketing associate professor; Prabhudev Konana,
IROM associate professor; Brian Lendecky, accounting
lecturer; Elota Patton, IROM lecturer; and
William Way, finance lecturer and undergraduate
advisor.
In the News:
Mabley Discusses Life as an MBA
Admissions Director with ABJ
Austin Business Journal, Aug. 10, 2007
 Tina
Mabley,
director of admissions for the full-time MBA
program, recently sat down with the Austin Business Journal and
talked about her job deciding who gets admitted to the McCombs
School and who doesn't.
Excerpt: “What's the hardest part of your job? Mabley: We receive 1,600
to 1,700 applications a year. The volume is high, yet each one
of those is an individual person who's made a very big decision
to go to graduate school. We try to give as much personal
attention as we can. It gets hard sometimes with the volume, but
we've put that as one of the priorities of our position in
making sure we respect every applicant as they go through the
process.”
Get the full story.
2007 Global Moot Corp® Champions Open
Nasdaq Stock Market in New York
Rob Adams
(far left), director of
Moot Corp and McCombs management lecturer, and Omega
Sensors, winners of the 2007 Global Moot Corp Competition,
preside over the opening bell at Nasdaq Aug. 10, 2007 in New
York City.
In the News:
Brandl Says New Immigration Rules Would Destroy Texas Service
Industry
KUT, Aug.3, 2007
 The
federal government is debating a law that would require employers
to fire workers whose names and Social Security numbers reported
on W-2 earnings reports don’t match the names or numbers on
file. Preliminary estimates show the law would force employers to
fire about 750,000 of the 11 million people in the state’s
work force. Michael Brandl, senior finance
lecturer, said these rules would have a big effect
on the Texas economy. “If that [law] were to actually take
place, you could expect to see the vast majority of restaurants
across the state shut down,” he said. “You could expect to see a
number of service-based firms simply going out of business
simply because they cannot find people to do the work that is
needed.”
Listen to the story (second in newspod).
In the News:
Hirst Says Selling Technology Solutions Nightmare for Accountants
Austin American-Statesman, Aug. 5, 2007
 A recent report found that Motive CEO Scott
Harmon disregarded proper accounting
methods and used “excessive management pressure” to make sales
targets. Motive, an Austin-based company that provides
troubleshooting software to broadband companies, has been under
formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission
since 2005. Eric Hirst, accounting professor and associate dean
of graduate programs, said the key issue at Motive involves how
the company accounted for revenue. “This is an area that many,
many people could make many, many honest mistakes in,” he said.
“When tech companies sell something, they sell what they call
‘solutions.’ They bundle products, services, warranties,
upgrades over the course of many years. It’s a nightmare for
accountants.”
Get the full story.
In the News:
Customers Crave Variety, Mahajan Says
The Brownsville Herald, Aug. 3, 2007
With the recent opening of
a second Chick-fil-A restaurant in
Brownsville, Texas, other fast food chains in the neighborhood
have been struggling. While lines at the nearby Church’s
Chicken, Wendy’s and Quizno’s are sparse, Chick-fil-A’s
drive-through line is normally 15 cars long during lunch. Vijay Mahajan,
marketing professor, said once the excitement wears off the market
will stabilize. “Ultimately people look for variety,” Mahajan
said. “It’s like a multiplex movie hall. Many times if you don’t
get into the movie you want to see, you see another. After a
while people will grow tired of Chick-fil-A’s long lines and say
to heck with it, I’m going to eat something else.”
Get the full story.
In the News:
Magazine Survey Ranks McCombs Sixth for Meeting Needs of CEOs
Chief Executive
magazine, April 2007
A survey of CEOs published in Chief Executive magazine ranked McCombs sixth among top business schools. The question
posed to the CEOs: Based either on your experience or your perception of business
schools, which best suits the
needs of CEOs?
Get the full story.
McCombs School Job Postings:
See past issues of McCombs Weekly.
Want to unsubscribe?
Faculty or staff
cannot unsubscribe from all-school communications on the
exchange server, but if you signed up to the listserv you may
unsubscribe by sending an e-mail to
listproc@lists.cc.utexas.edu
with the body text unsubscribe mccombsweekly.
Do not put
your name or other information in the message, and be sure to
send your request from the e-mail address you used to subscribe
to the list.
Send comments to
communications@mccombs.utexas.edu. McCombs Weekly is a product of the
McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, Copyright ©
2007. All rights reserved. We respect your privacy and will not share email
addresses with outside parties.
|
